I’ve just finished reading a great children’s book, Nathan Fox Dangerous Times by L. Brittney. The book is about a 14-year-old actor in Elizabethan times who is asked to become a young spy. He is friends with a young Will Shakespeare in the early part of the book and the story includes little nods to his plays with Nathan becoming caught up in the tragic story of Othello.
Dangerous Times (published by Macmillan) is the first in a planned series (the second Traitor’s Gold is also available) and has been shortlisted for the 2008 Branford Boase Award.
I enjoyed the part where Nathan is trained up best of all and it looks like that will continue in the sequel.
Nathan Fox is also the second children’s book I have read in the last few weeks to have been written by a woman who uses her initials (the other being M.G. Harris)
Of course J.K Rowling is the most famous example. I read ages ago that Joanne Rowling was told boys wouldn’t read a book if it was written by a female and that was why she was told to use J.K. If true that’s a real shame and I wonder if that still applies after her phenomenal success besides you often only have to look inside the cover to see from the short biography or photo that the author is a woman. Do boys really judge a book from its cover?
So how would I feel about being S.M Humphreys rather than Susan Humphreys? I think the Susan version looks friendlier and there’s not much difference in length. What do you think?
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